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George Washington 



An address by 

CHAS. EUGENE CLARK 

Vice-President of the Peoples Savings Bank and Trust 
Company of Covington, Kentucky 



George Washington 



An address by 

CHAS. EUGENE CLARK 

Vice-President of the Peoples Savings Bank and Trust 
Company of Covington, Kentucky 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

AN ADDRESS BY CHAS. EUGENE CLARK, 

Vice-President of the Peoples Savings 'Bank and Trust Company 

of Covington, Kentucky. 

GEORGE WASHINGTON, our first President, was 
the great grandson of John Washington, an English 
gentleman of culture, who migrated to Westmore- 
land County, Virginia, in the year 1662, and who became a 
man of large figure in the colony of Virginia, following the 
life of a planter, and Who became a member of the House 
of Burgesses of the colony in 1666, and who, through his 
industry, acquired large landed possessions, servants, cattle 
and other wealth of the day. 

The great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch 
married Ann Pope, by whom he had three children, Law- 
rence, John and Ann Washington. Lawrence married 
Mildred Warner, and to which union was born John, Augus- 
tine, also known as Austin, and Mildred Washington. 

Austin intermarried with the beautiful Mary Ball, the 
cultured daughter of a wealthy planter. The couple had six 
children, among whom was the subject of this address, 
George Washington, who was born at Bridge's Creek in 
Westmoreland County, February 22nd, 1732. 

Three years later the home of his parents was burned, 
and they removed to Stafford on the north bank of the 
Rappahannock, opposite the town of Frederickstown, where 
Austin Washington died in the year 1743, leaving a large 
landed estate, the greater portion of which he devised to his 
son Lawrence, a son by a former marriage, and who received 
the place on Hunting Creek and which is now known as 
Mt. Vernon, and to his son George he gave the place on the 
Rappahannock. 

Austin's widow, with her small children, all of tender 
years, were left in ordinary circumstances. She purchased 
a small one-story house of three rooms in Frederickburg to 

3 



which she brought her Httle family, and there reared them to 
the best of her abihty in humble surroundings, while per- 
sonally directing in the management and farming with the 
assistance of her servants the plantation across the Rappa- 
hannock. 

George Washington, our future president, had for many 
years few enjoyments that were not common to other boys 
of the time. His schooling facilities were very limited, he 
attending a field school, as it was then known, conducted 
by a church sexton. 

At a later period he was removed to the home of his 
half-brother Lawrence at Mt. Vernon, where he had the 
opportunity of meeting people of greater quality, dignity 
and breeding than had been his wont at Fredericksburg. 

Among the company whom he was privileged to meet in 
his new home none influenced him more than Lord Fairfax 
and the noble Lord's cousin, both of whom took a great 
interest in Washington, now largely grown to the estate of 
young manhood, he being now sixteen years of age, athletic, 
tall and straight, some six feet in stature, of a light com- 
plexion with brown hair and marvelous blue eyes. 

The young Washington not only hunted at will over the 
plantation at Mt. Vernon, but also met with Lord Fairfax in 
the chase, a sport then much in vogue, and this intimacy 
ripened into a warm friendship, and later led to the young 
man's employment as private surveyor to his lordship's 
lands, lying in the wilds of the then sparsely settled country 
on the headwaters of the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio 
rivers. 

This employment having been undertaken amidst great 
danger, was creditably performed in the face of murderous 
Indians, hostile Frenchmen and the absence of all human 
and domestic comforts. His roof was the sky and bearskins 
and leaves furnished his bed, and great fatigue was ever 
encountered as they toiled over the rugged country. This 
employment secured for him the position of public surveyor 
of the colony of Virginia. 

4 



These surveying campaigns which he now undertook 
and prosecuted with great activity enured him to hardships. 
They taught him the ways of the woods and that of its wild 
inhabitants. Through them he learned the course of the 
streams and where lie the best routes of travel through a 
rugged and unbroken wilderness. 

In these expeditions he learned the virtue of self-reliance 
and was trained for the many glorious military services 
which he later rendered his country, and which resulted 
after many reverses in a great triumph of arms at the battles 
of the Meadows and Ft. Necessity. 

He later took Ft. Duquesne, after the English com- 
mander, General Braddock, had failed to storm it, and broke 
the power of the French and Indians, and Ft. Duquesne 
became Ft. Pitt, now known as Pittsburgh of our own day, 
which opened the way to the Ohio and the great West, for 
English colonists. 

His brilliant victories on the headwaters of these rivers 
was of great significance and opened the way for the writing 
of the chapter of the development of the great West, which 
then began at the slopes of the Alleghenies and extended 
westward to the Mississippi and onward across the bound- 
less prairies to the Rockies. 

At this time that great stretch of country was absolutely 
unknown. Its only inhabitants were the fierce Redskins, 
who roamed its limitless forests in quest of game, which 
everywhere abounded. Today it is the very heart of our 
common country, with its teeming millions of energetic 
people and with boundless resources and wealth. But its 
future was forecast by the brilliant victory of George 
Washington, as he climbed the mountains and fought and 
conquered the hostile French and Indians, who were then its 
masters. 

These brilliant campaigns, with their several successes 
and reverses, taught the then valiant young soldier the art of 
war and developed in him those characteristics which enabled 
him at a later day, as Commander-in-Chief of the forces of 

5 



the revolted colonies, to successfully conduct the mighty 
campaign waged through the years of the war of the Revolu- 
tion against a well organized army, the very flower of Eng- 
land's troops, and which resulted in our independence. 

His resourcefulness and prowess as exhibited on many 
a battlefield with the French and Indians became a matter 
of common knowledge throughout the colonies, and espe- 
cially in that of Virginia, and inspired the colonial soldiers 
to enlist under his banners and fight with great bravery, 
and helped win many a hard-fought battle. 

In these French and Indian campaigns, which the colo- 
nists had been fighting for more than a hundred years, were 
foreshadowed the suflFerings of Valley Forge and the im- 
mortal victory of Yorktown, and there was developed the 
stratagem of this wary and indominable soldier who was to 
be the savior of his country in its struggle for a life of 
independence. 

George Washington was ever modest, vigilant, kind and 
valiant, and always had a due regard to the lives of his men. 
He never wantonly sacrificed them, but bided his time and 
opportunity. 

He often chafed under the intollerance and ignorance of 
the British officers and troops in his earlier campaigns waged 
for the British crown and was much chagrined at the dis- 
courteous treatment which he in common with his fellow 
Virginians suffered at their hands and especially at that 
of General Braddock's. 

As a citizen and military commander his character was 
such and his fame so great and his integrity and leadership 
so well known that he was unanimously chosen as Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the colonial forces when the war for 
independence began. 

His conduct in that war, his battles and the sufferings of 
his troops and the hardship endured by him have become 
matters of common knowledge, and have been interwoven 
in the very warp and woof of our history, and have become 
an inspiration to our people, one of its priceless heritages. 

6 



His fame became world-wide, and after one of his most 
brilliant maneuvers he received a message from Frederick 
the Great of Prussia, who honored him by the greeting, 
"from the oldest General in the world to the Greatest," as 
he commended the brilliant campaigns and strategy of 
our hero. 

Washington will be ever remembered and honored for 
the rebuke which he administered to the generals and those 
malcontents of the army who were mutinying over the want 
of their pay. His words breathed the spirit of freedom and 
accomplished the desired effect. From that time forward, 
the highest spirit of patriotism prevailed throughout the 
army, and one and all willingly bore every hardship. 

His refusal of the offer of a crown and his declination 
which was a stinging rebuke on this occasion, is an undying 
testimony to his patriotism as a typical American. To him 
all honor, for he was a royal example of fortitude, energy 
and patriotism. 

He became the unanimous choice of the nation for the 
Presidency upon the termination of the war for independ- 
ence. His hesitancy and diffidence in the acceptance of 
this high office did him great honor, for although pre- 
eminent among the men of his time, he considered that he 
was but one among many loyal patriots who had covered 
themselves with greatest glory, and to whom we as a people 
owe undying honor. 

For it was in this period of our history when our fore- 
fathers, struggling against great odds, established the 
nobility, grandeur, patience, breadth, depth and the resource- 
fulness of American character and limned upon the heavens 
the heights of American patriotism, which has ever actuated 
our people and been its greatest inspiration as we have 
wrought and vizualized in the century of our accomplish- 
ment and upon which we have builded our character and 
progress. 

Washington displayed great tact in the selection of his 
cabinet and in dealing with the multifarious interests of the 

7 



new republic, and succeeded on the whole in giving general 
satisfaction during his terms of office in the exalted station 
to which he had been chosen. 

Yet notwithstanding his unblemished character, patriot- 
ism and great work he did not escape that calumny that is 
ever heaped upon those occupying the first stations in life 
and who endeavor to worthily serve their fellowmen and 
country. He, like all other great leaders, who sit in the sun 
of accomplishment, became shining targets for the dis- 
affected, the en\dous and the unpatriotic. Such is ever one 
of the burdens and inheritances of greatness. 

Through it all our first president was unshaken in his 
fidelity to the constitution and the ideals and the people 
whom he served, and his reputation was untarnished, for 
the shafts of envy, by reason of its noble texture, were 
turned aside, just as the mud daubs fall off the polished 
marble. He earnestly endeavored to enforce the laws, 
maintain order, fulfill his oath of office and lead the republic 
to greater national life. 

He displayed great tact and good sense in supporting the 
policies of Alexander Hamilton against great opposition and 
persuasion to the contrary. He recognized the brilliancy of 
Hamilton and the soundness of his theories and that they 
underlied the future greatness of our country. 

Washington exercised wisdom and statesmanship of a 
high order in observing a strict neutrality in the war that was 
then being waged between England and France during his 
administration. He realized that should we attempt to take 
sides that we would become like grain between the millstones 
and be ground to powder. He recognized that the country 
must have a breathing spell in which it could recuperate. 

He justly resented the conduct of the French Minister 
Genet by ordering him to cease interfering in his endeavor 
to embroil our country in this war and in demanding of the 
French Government his recall and enforcing the dignity of 
our Government and our rights as a nation. 

He brought to the administration of the country the 



sagacity of a sage, the military knowledge of a great chief- 
tain, and the devotion of a hero, all of which have won for 
him the highest commendation of his countrymen, and have 
ever endeared him to all humanity. 

Among all our great men, with the exception of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, who arose in our country at a later day, 
Washington became the most celebrated, and is looked 
upon as the Father of his Country, as Abraham Lincoln 
become in its second greatest crisis its savior. 

Under the wisdom of Washington and his associates, all 
of whom were men of great brilliancy, it can safely be said, 
"that our constitution sprang from a condition bordering on 
anarchy" and was administered by him as president for the 
well being of society and established this republic upon a 
firm base and sent it forward in its course to serve mankind. 

It was in the midst of such conditions so burdened and 
agitated and so largely disturbed by distractions and theories 
of government, that Washington, the very foremost citizen 
and soldier of his time, a man of noble mien, yet of a modest 
and retiring disposition, with his high sense of duty and 
truth, was elevated to our first office and undertook to 
administer the constitution of the then newly-born republic 
for the common welfare. 

How well he governed, let the mighty republic, with its 
now boundless power, with its hundred million in habitants, 
who, notwithstanding the fact that though near seven score 
years have passed since it gained its birthright, is but looking 
forward on the horizon of its morning, and which has been 
an inspiration for the down-trodden of the world, since we 
established our freedom. 

As president he was wise, calm, just and dignified, free 
of all rancor and bitter partisanship. In fact, was a typical 
leader and the right man for the right place. It may be 
truthfully said that he was God-sent and God-given, as he 
came into the world and the affairs of our country in one 
of the greatest crises of the existence of our people and 
wrought manfully for our freedom. 



He was a man of large experience, of caution and yet of 
great action. He did nothing which he did not conceive to 
be both just and reasonable. With a character as lofty as 
his mind, he ever endeavored to faithfully serve his country, 
and labored to strengthen the republic in all of its proper 
authority. He conceived that a new nation had been born 
and that it must be equipped with all the powers to ensure its 
rights and dignities, and to enforce its will and make for its 
well being and perpetuity. 

He was ever a warm friend of humanity, liberty and 
science. Under his administration of governmental affairs 
the success of the nation, the times considered, was unsur- 
passed. Through his wise administration confidence and 
activity were restored in the business affairs of the people, 
and order in government, agriculture and commerce flour- 
ished, credit rose rapidly and society prospered under a sense 
of security, feeling and believing that it was both free and 
well-governed. 

Good government and a firm administration ever make 
for progression. They are the foundation stones upon which 
are built a nation's greatness, and give it honorable standing 
in the world, and which make for the happiness of its people, 
and redound to its glory. 

Washington had the power to divine amidst the con- 
fusion of rival interests and the cries of factional strife, the 
true aims, hopes and vital needs of the new-born republic 
and its people, and nothing could swerve him from the 
course which was straight ahead, and which has had such 
happy sequences for our people. 

He was like an able pilot, who carries his boat through 
the stress of storm and weather to calmness and safety, 
saving and serving the interests committed to his care and 
charge. 

The power to conceive and understand, the faith to 
believe in, and the unselfish courage to live for and serve 
the best interests of his country, were the central factors and 
great characteristics of Washington's life. They were the 

10 



heart and soul of his Americanism and counted for the 
grandeur of our people, the security and safety of our 
republic. 

He taught that true Americanism was a belief in the 
inalienable rights of man to life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness, and that they were God-given. He realized that 
our liberty and happiness were as natural and essential to the 
well being of mankind as the beauty of the sunlight and the 
freedom of the winds and the mobility of the waters that 
coursed from our mountains to the sea. That all was God- 
given and inalienable. 

He fundamentally believed that taxation without repre- 
sentation is t}'ranny, and that all just government can and 
must rest on the consent of the governed, and that a free 
people should choose its own rulers, if it would perpetuate 
its existence. 

Professor Van Dyke has truthfully said, "that such is 
true Americanism, ideals embodying themselves in the life 
of a people, a creed heated white-hot in the furnace of con- 
viction, and hammered into shape on the anvil of life." 

And it was the subordination of self, to that ideal, that 
creed which gave eminence and glory to Washington, Frank- 
lin, Adams, Henry, Hamilton and all that brilliant galaxy of 
patriots who stood with him and them and made for and 
carved out our country's future history and greatness. 

Washington was a great figure, in his day and genera- 
tion, and was pre-eminent among the patriots with whom 
he lived and labored, "but only so in so far as a mountain 
peak extends farthest heavenward from the center of a 
mighty mountain range," or as a towering tree overtops its 
gigantic fellows in the forest. "He was buttressed among 
patriots" who were veritable giants in the cause of life, 
liberty and happiness under a free government which had 
come to serve and save mankind. 

The Americanism of Washington and those brilliant men 
who stood with him shoulder to shoulder in the struggle for 
freedom and those countless patriots who fought for our 

11 



independence will never die. So long as the winds blow 
freely over our limitless prairies and our great mountain 
ranges lift their mighty crests into the blue of heaven, and 
our mighty rivers flow in majesty and beauty to the sea, the 
noble example and the valiant deeds of these men of the 
revolution will ever accentuate the patriotism of our people 
and nerve them to strive in the cause of freedom and work 
for the advancement of mankind. 

At the end of his second term of office Washington 
retired to the privacy of his plantation home at Mt. Vernon, 
carrying with him the best wishes and plaudits of his coun- 
trymen, after having previously absolutely refused to con- 
sider a further re-election to the presidency. This refusal 
has set a precedent which has been faithfully observed by all 
of his successors in this exalted ofhce to the present day. 

He died at Mt. Vernon December 14th, 1799, after a 
brief illness, where he had led a noble, respected life, one 
filled with the beauty, joy and grandeur of living, and he has 
left us an example of noble, patient manhood, of a brilliant 
and almost unexampled patriotism. 

In his life he has said to have done the two greatest 
things which in politics man can have the privilege of doing, 
in that he maintained by peace that independence of his 
country which he had acquired by war, for he founded free 
government in the name of the principles of order by 
re-establishing their sway, and it is said that when he 
retired from public life both tasks were accomplished and 
he could enjoy the results along with all the rest of his 
fellowmen. 

In such a high enterprise we are told that what they have 
cost matters but Httle, for the sweat of such toil is dried at 
once on the brow where God places such laurels, and that 
very often men die under the burdens they carry before the 
day of recompense arrives, but Washington lived to receive 
it. He deserved and enjoyed both success and repose and 
gained immortality. 

Of all great men he was acclaimed the most virtuous and 
the most fortunate. In this world God has no higher favors 

12 



to bestow. May our country ever be blessed with men of the 
caUber of Washington and Lincoln, for we then may be 
assured that our destinies are in good hands and our future 
assured. 

As we continue to exist as a people may God in His 
unbounded wisdom and mercy ever continue to send to us 
such leaders, that we may serve him and work out a noble 
destiny. Our future lies in the asserting of an American 
policy, one that will be friendly but independent. We must 
be ever courteous but ever firm, and if we would exist as a 
free people and continue to enjoy our grand inheritance 
carved for us by Washington and saved to us by Lincoln, we 
must be ever ready and ever prepared to defend our rights 
and assert our interests as we try to be just toward ourselves, 
our fellowmen and Heaven. 

We can maintain our position and insure peace only by 
being thoroughly prepared for war. 

"Let us be just and fear not. Let all our acts and aims 
be our God's, our Country's and Truth's." 



13 



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